Weekend racer: cheating and self-governance in road racing

This paper studies how reputation enforces socially cooperative behavior in road racing in the New Orleans metro area. We find that reputation mechanisms have a much stronger effect for frequent road racers than for members of the New Orleans Track Club. We find that club membership cuts cheating in half while a runner who has finished at least one-third of the 2013 running season does not cheat. Thus, self-governance eliminates corruption when there is a reputational mechanism in place. Since data on informal running clubs are unavailable, our analysis underestimates the effect of club membership on socially cooperative behavior in road racing.